The Road to Cancun, Part 4: An American in Brussels

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There are times and places where being an American can make you the center of attention, and not always in a fun way.

When your country does things that the rest of the world sees as selfish, short-sighted, ignorant, arrogant or just plain ornery, it’s uncomfortable to find yourself being asked to explain to perplexed foreigners what the heck those crazy Americans are thinking …

Over the three days I was in Brussels for the Climate Action Conference earlier this week, it was impossible to get away from the widely-held and deeply-felt belief in pretty much the rest of the world that the single biggest roadblock to getting a meaningful climate treaty is the US.

Sure, there are lots of other issues hanging things up. For example, the poor countries want the rich countries to give them large amounts of money so they can get clean technologies that will allow them to leapfrog over the dirty-energy industrial phase of development that made the rich countries rich in the first place.

And the Chinese – who just this year edged out the US as the planet’s biggest carbon polluters — are being generally irascible because they just really, really hate foreigners telling them what to do about anything.

EU climate officials go to great lengths to stress that progress is being made on other fronts, despite the Americans deciding not to play ball (although it’s kind of hard to get very excited about the handful of incremental steps they point to: the agreement to limit global warming to 2 degrees isn’t very impressive when you realize that even the non-binding targets countries have set for carbon cuts won’t be nearly enough to arrest rising temperatures).

But whatever other bumps there are the road to Cancun, the fact is that America — the second largest economy in the world (right behind the eurozone), the beacon of democracy, the sole remaining global superpower — just couldn’t get it together and get with the program. And that’s put a serious damper on the whole enterprise.

That sentiment reached a high point Tuesday evening at the climate conference in Brussels. We had just had a video call from Jeffrey Sachs, an American professor who teaches sustainable economic development at Columbia University. He also heads The Earth Institute at Columbia.

Sachs told us that, in his view, the failure of the US to pass climate change legislation this year was a game-changer. The comet came, the comet went, and the rest of the world shouldn’t hold its breath waiting for the Americans to get on board. Not happening anytime in the foreseeable future, he said, even if the Democrats manage to stave off disaster in the midterms.

He pointed out that polls show barely half of Americans see climate change as anything to get concerned about (In fact, a Pew poll that was released a day after Sach’s presentation shows it’s even worse than that). And, he added, many representatives who voted for what’s been labeled “the job-killing cap-and-trade bill” are expected to bite the dust in next week’s mid-terms.

Sach’s bottom line: except for the outside chance that China will get on board, forcing the US to join in, the rest of the world should proceed on the assumption that America isn’t going to be part of any serious solution to global climate change.

During the dinner that followed, anxious European colleagues pressed me: Was the situation really that grim in the US? Could Sachs’ depressing take be accurate? And if so, what’s up with that?

But I find myself coming back to an Upton Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

Given a choice between sticking with what’s put food on the table so far, and an uncertain future that may well see dramatic shifts in how people earn a living, many Americans prefer to disregard climate science because accepting it would require them to make changes they don’t want to have to make.

Maybe that’s just human nature.

But when Europeans point out that their people seem to be willing to deal with the reality and start making those changes, I really don’t know what to say.

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2 Responses to The Road to Cancun, Part 4: An American in Brussels

Hi Liam,
Checked out your blog. Interesting, thoughtful stuff. I’m using my gmail for email because the ntlworld one isn’t working. Hope you are well and working hard in your many guises!
Our new gite is big and in the middle of the country.

Hi Eric,
Glad you like the blog!
If you want to stay in touch with what I’m writing, you can subscribe to the blog. That way you get an e-mail notice whenever I post something new. It’s just below my bio info on the right side of the page and it’s free …
Hope to see you folks before too long!

About This Blog

I'm Liam Moriarty.

I’m a veteran journalist in news- papers, magazines, public radio and on the web. I have dual US/EU citizenship and I divide my time between Seattle and Normandy, France.

The more I report on climate change, energy, transportation, resource consumption and related issues, the more I see connections and commonalities between how Europeans are tackling these problems and how we’re going about it in the Pacific Northwest.

This blog is my effort to connect those dots in ways that might help us all find ways of living that leave a green, healthy planet for our grandchildren.

To learn more about me and my work, please visit www.liammoriarty.com.

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